A Battery Revolution

A New Jersey man is looking to go off-grid in a big way. Jason Hughes has spent several hundred hours and $20,000 over the past year re-jiggering a 1,400 pound Tesla Model S battery to create his own personal electric company. He and his fiancee recently moved to North Carolina and are in the process of installing over 100 solar panels at their new home. His plan is to add a second Tesla battery, enabling them to not only live off the grid, but also store a week's worth of back up power.

Alternative energy sources have driven the recent surge to develop a new generation of batteries capable of storing and deploying the electricity as needed. Brookhaven National Laboratory, Stony Brook University, Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are among the big names along with a number of start-ups who are all getting involved.